Hello again it’s 4:30 on a Wednesday and welcome to my second session on how to value your time my name is Clare Evans and I’m a time management productivity coach.

I’m here to help you create a happier more fulfilled life living in a more naturally balanced way. If you’d like to comment or ask a question then feel free to do so on Facebook . So in the last video I talked about the real value of your time based on your hourly rate and what that means and how you can calculate where you spend your time based on what your hourly rate is and the importance of knowing what your hourly rate is. So you have a better sense of the value of your time. Today I just want to look at where you spend your time and whether you’re spending your time on high-value tasks or you’re wasting your time. The beginning of the day we tend to go in and check our email first thing in the morning and before you know it an hour or more has gone by. You’re busy scrolling through social media and you get distracted by an interesting article something that links off to another article and before you know it another hour or so that’s gone by and then the morning disappears and you feel that you haven’t really achieved anything. Let alone got started on your list of tasks for the day.

So those really high value tasks are those tasks that are adding to what you do and helping you to achieve your goals. Is that really the best way that you could be spending your time? Similarly when you’re busy working and you get interrupted by either an email phone call or even a colleague coming along and saying have you got a minute and before you know it it’s half an hour later. You finish off that email that you just thought you’d pop in and do you come off the phone call that you thought would only just take a couple of minutes and the discussion that you’ve had with your colleague and and sudden you’ve got a whole lot more things to add to your list all throughout the day. You get distracted by something that comes in something you think about you add it to the list. It’s about knowing what is important and where your time can really add value to make sure that you’re both respecting your time and appreciating where potentially you might be wasting your time. It’s all about the choices that we make throughout the day with what we’re doing each of the activities and asking yourself is this the best use of my time. Is the task that I’m working on at the moment something that is really adding value or if I think about it am I really just wasting my time on this and it’s something that’s not really adding value it’s not core to what I do.

That’s something that you can check in with yourself on a daily basis and it’s something that I do a couple of reminders there thinking about is this the best use of my time check-in is it called to what I’m trying to do. Is there something else I could be doing or should be doing that would really add value and help me to achieve what I want and take me forward or get me the results that I’m really looking for. Understanding and appreciating the value of your time particularly what your hourly rate is and how that calculates out undo what you charge for your time there comes a point where you need to look at outsourcing delegating or paying someone else to do certain tasks can really add value to your time and effectively double the hours that you have available so if you’re paying somebody else to do a task they are doing a piece of work for you and you can also be getting on with something else at the same time. So you’re doubling the amount of time that is available for a particular task or for your business and understanding at what point it becomes worthwhile paying someone else to do a task rather than you doing it yourself. Particularly if it’s something that you don’t like doing. For instance how many of you spend hours working either at the evening or the weekend catching up on your accounts or sending out invoices. If that tends to happen if it’s before a deadline tax return time that time you realize that you need to get a load of invoices paid all you need to send them out before you get the money coming in and there’s that little flurry of activity so thinking about whether that’s something that you can automate to improve the process have a system in place that enables you to do that in a much more timely manner or is that a task that you could outsource to the bookkeeper or delegate to somebody else in your team.

If you if you don’t have a team if it’s just you working on the business then there are resources available that can can help you with that. That’s really what outsourcing and delegation is about. So if you pay a bookkeeper to do your accounts on a weekly or a monthly basis they are far more likely or they’re highly likely to get that done far quicker than you would so you might be paying them for a couple of hours work a week and or potentially even a month depending on the complexity which is something that you might spend half a day or even a whole day doing. So by knowing the value of your time and as I was talking about previously what your hourly rate is it’s much easier to calculate it makes sense for me to pay a bookkeeper to do that too than me spending half a day a day getting my accounts up to date when it needs doing all before a deadline. That gives you more time to focus on the important tasks that only you can do that are really cool to your business and this doesn’t just apply to business you might feel that there are lots of tasks around the house that you need to spend time doing and again there are people that are more more qualified more skilled. How many of you have DIY tasks that are waiting to be done but don’t get quite finished. You don’t have the right tools. You don’t have the time to to get it all done. In one go you could pay somebody to come in and do that so whether it’s the gardening or the DIY or some of those chores around the house that needs to be done on a daily or a weekly or monthly basis why not pay someone else to do them. Which means that it frees up your time so you don’t have to spend your time in the evening and the weekends doing some of those things that you really don’t like to do. So if you value your time you can start to see where does it make sense for me to do this task and spend my time 2-3 hours on a particular activity or would I be better off outsourcing or delegating or giving that task to somebody else to do. If you appreciate the value of your time then you will get much greater value out of what you’re doing and feel far happier and fulfilled in where you do spend your time compared with where you don’t so think about what you’re doing on a daily basis. Is it really cool is it something you enjoy or is there a better way of doing this or is there someone else that can do it for me.

So if you are interested in the hourly rate calculator to work out what your hourly rate is so you can do that comparison of should I pay somebody compared with what I’m charging. The hourly rate or what I actually get paid. If you’re a paid employee and you’d like that calculator then just drop me a message and I will send them out to you. Take a look on my website there is a free time quiz that is on the website so you can see where you could potentially be wasting your time how to value your time better and where you could make those changes. So that you’re feeling you’re making better choices with the time that you have available. So take a look at that quiz send it through to me and I will send you some ideas and strategies back in response to where you can actually start to value your time more. I want to look at how you can delegate and outsource effectively. It’s not the case of just dumping something on people it’s how to make it effective so it works both ways. So you know where you are and what you’re doing. You can delegate effectively and know that work is being done well so until next week have a good rest of the week and enjoy the weekend.